In 2020s The trains we will need.

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In 2020s The trains we will need.


The politicians may spend the two years left of the current regime talking about rail projects for which they’re seeking almost $6billion loan from the China EXIM Bank. Last year, transportation minister Rotimi Amaechi hinted that several rail tracks would be ready by 2018. Six months to 2018, the debate in the Senate is about south-east’s exclusion from the proposed projects. The loan has not even been negotiated, I guess.

Vacancy ! ! ! (place your advert with us here &promotion of your events , offices and Association , modelling promotion ETC etc )


Senators Abaribe Eyinnaya, Ike Ekweremadu and others spoke for their constituencies when they alleged that the proposed rail tracks won’t pass through any part of the south-east. Minister Amaechi and his lieutenants have assured the nation that the track will pass through Abia State. Let’s hope they’re right.

But talk is cheap. My fear is that, even by May 2019, the coastal rail project will still be on the drawing board. And it will be a campaign issue, just as the “second Niger bridge” has been since 1979. Could it be true that the only good politician is one dead? I disagree.

President Buhari said the loan would be for the modernization of the Lagos-Kano, Lagos-Ibadan, Kano-Kaduna and Lagos-Calabar rail tracks. The ministry of transportation has cleverly stated that one of the segments – the coastal rail project — will pass through “Port Harcourt-Aba-Uyo-Calabar with extension to Onne Deep Sea Port”.

Abaribe’s motion to stop the loan on account of the south-east’s exclusion has failed in the Senate. But if past experience is anything to go by, I predict that the fund to be obtained will finish just as the rail track will be entering the south-east. It’s a ploy used especially by former military leaders – the class of 1966 who fought “to keep Nigeria one” – to rob the south-east of deserved projects. For instance, foreign consultants told them, in 1973, that if Nigeria needed a steel manufacturing firm it should be sited near Onitsha. They ignored the consultants and quickly moved to Ajaokuta. Forty-three years later, the Ajaokuta Steel Complex has yet to take off. It has been sold, bought back and resold.  Its machinery has become obsolete. Welcome to Nigeria!

Rail infrastructure will be beneficial to everyone, no matter where it’s sited. This column has reiterated the importance of rail transportation, but I’ve been more concerned about having high-speed trains and rail tracks. As we’re about to enter the third decade of the 21st century, the trains we will need are high-speed ones.  So the authorities should bear this in mind, while “modernising” the rail tracks first built in 1909.

I was excited when I first read about high-speed trains in Japan, China, Spain, France and other parts of Europe. It takes a medium-speed passenger train just two hours for the 485km trip from London to Paris. In December 2010, a Chinese passenger train covered 486km/h. By 2003, Japan had the world’s fastest train that travelled 581km per hour. I don’t know which count